My Khin thinks I look like a Seminole.

 

I am not a Seminole, nor any kind of Native American as far as I know. Not that any of us knows much about our ancestry these days — after two centuries of enslavement, of forced breeding programs, of the obliteration of anything resembling human culture.

 

We don’t know what the aliens call themselves. We’ve been told to call them Khin. We suspect it means “master” in their language. It certainly means that to us.

 

I was luckier than most. My mother’s Khin allowed me to stay with her for nearly five years before selling me off. I remember her, a little, and I remember some things she told me. I know one of my grandparents came from Guatemala. So maybe I have a little Inca blood, or Aztec, or whatever it is they have down there. Not Seminole.

 

But my Khin wants a Seminole warrior, so now I am a Seminole. I put feathers in my hair and wear a loincloth. I have no idea if real Seminole ever wore such things, but my Khin thinks they look authentic. Sometimes I get to wear a ceremonial headdress which I’m pretty sure is actually Sioux.

 

My Khin admires the Seminole, the tribe who never surrendered. Outnumbered and outgunned by the white man, the Seminole simply withdrew into the impenetrable swamps of the Pa-hay-Okee, living to fight another day. My Khin respects a warrior who knows when not to fight.

 

My own fights are ritualized, of course. Force fields blunt our strongest blows so that no one ever gets seriously hurt.

 

It’s all just a sideshow, a weird symbolic prelude to the real battles between Khin in their own incomprehensible Games. A pre-Game victory in the human contests gives a Khin some indefinable edge in the Games that really matter.

 

We human champions are judged less by our fighting prowess than for our ability to properly represent the great martial cultures of humanity, as the Khin understand them. I’ve fought Spartans and Maori, Vikings and Romans. Even Amazons, who I am not sure even existed in real life.

 

The Khin tell us it is a great honor for humanity that they should choose humans and human cultures to represent them in ritual combat. It shows they recognize humans as a fierce and proud people, worthy of respect and admiration. But the subtext is obvious. Fierce and proud though humans may be, the Khin conquered us easily.

 

Physically, Khin are no match for humans. They look like big globs of protoplasm nested in a horny carapace — like a jellyfish mated with a crab. Human scientists (back when we still had scientists) theorized that the Khin evolved from a symbiotic partnership between two different species.

 

But Khin technology is vastly superior to ours. They do things with energy fields that we cannot begin to understand. In the early days of the invasion we tried firing nuclear missiles at their ships. The ships simply projected a dampening field that somehow “switched off” atomic reactions, rendering our weapons inert.

 

Soon after, we learned that they could just as easily switch off organic reactions. A single Khin ship could effortlessly “deactivate” all life in an entire human city. They only had to do that a couple of times before we got the message.

 

So now humans grow food for the Khin. We build their cities. We clean their dwellings. We tend their young. We fight their battles, on Earth and in space, and millions die in their service.

 

But we champions are fortunate. We are valued and trusted. We are given the best of food and care. We travel the world with our Khin, and are allowed to meet and train with one another. Many of us have become friends. And allies.

 

After many years of regional contests, the great World Games are approaching. The most powerful Khin will all be gathered in one place.

 

The Ninjas have smuggled explosives in the guise of fireworks. The Huns have sacrificed many lives to harvest deadly materials from ancient, long-abandoned reactors. Our bomb will not be powerful, but it will be very dirty.

 

We have no illusions that this one act will free us from the Khin. Even if we succeed in wiping out the Khin leadership, others will take their place. If we somehow managed to kill every Khin on Earth, more would come. Yet we would all gladly die to strike this blow.

 

So maybe I have truly become, in spirit at least, a Seminole. Maybe we all have. We may be beaten, but we will never give up.

 

If nothing else, I hope the Khin will know this. We are not honored by their regard, by their feeble emulation of what they perceive as the best in us. We do not want their honor.

 

We want them dead.